


to live and not to breathe

by ashkatom



Series: OLOHverse [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Post-Ascension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-30 00:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5144213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I understand the necessity of converting the Fleet,” the violetblooded Captain who has graciously invited you to his table says, “but I had imagined someone with a little more-” his eyes travel over you and AA, and your crimson and gold, “-expertise.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	to live and not to breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Postcards from the [sideblog](http://www.onextendedvacation.tumblr.com). This prompt was "How does Aradia's arrangement work? Is she officially the flagship helmsman?"

You learn, in the shortest sweep of your life, exactly how resistant to change the Alternian Empire is. Nobody likes a lack of defined role, either, which means when they encounter you and AA - and you think you’ve met half the Empire at this point - the digging starts. At first, nobody’s brave enough to push too hard on either of you, given that you occasionally breathe the same air as the Empress and her pet Admiral even if neither of you have official ranks - but then, five nights into evaluating a rig retrofit for a new Helmsman who practically worships the ground Aradia walks on, it happens.

“I understand the necessity of converting the Fleet,” the violetblooded Captain who has _graciously_ invited you to his table says, “but I had imagined someone with a little more-” his eyes travel over you and AA, and your crimson and gold, “-expertise.”

He means Equius. All of you have managed to deflect questions about why Equius has been relegated to R&D while you and AA are frantically tearing through sectors of the Fleet, auditing Helm retrofits to be in order with the Empire’s new standards, but it’s not the first time anyone has ever implied that you shouldn’t be trusted with doing the work.

Unfortunately, he’s picked a bad time to pitch this pissing contest. You and AA are both on your last respective nerves. Neither of you have slept more than three hours at a stretch in seasons, you have a headache from checking the new biowire interfaces, and AA had to calm you down from the edge of a panic attack in the Helmsblock not six hours ago, one of the gifts Vriska left you with. 

“Mm,” AA says, and swallows the bite of food she was chewing on when Captain Fuckface started in on this. “I’m not sure how you expect to find two people with more expertise than the inventor of the rig and the first of its Helmsmen. The Empress does, of course, require the best.”

His barbs have been getting less and less veiled the longer you’ve stayed on. You’re not _surprised_ , exactly, when he comes out with, “I admit to some confusion at the source of your expertise.” Voice warm and eyes cold, he adds, “Common knowledge is that you have never served in the Helm yourself.”

The temperature of the ship seems to drop a few degrees as Aradia lays down her knife and fork. “AA-” you mutter, sinking down in your chair. You’re entirely too tired for this bullshit, and - well, the violet keeps making you flinch; you’ve had to deal with too many of these assholes, recently, and you still can’t stop thinking of Eridan every single time. In your darker moments, you’re almost glad he died before he moulted, so you’d never have to go through thinking someone else is him. Mostly, you’re just pissed he’s dead.

“No, no.” Aradia dabs at her mouth with a snow-white napkin. “If he doubts my expertise, all I need to do is establish my credentials.”

You sit up in alarm. AA hates the Helmsblock even more than you do, for all that she locks it behind a grimace and ruthlessly, kindly coaxing out the details of the working conditions from the Helmsmen contracted to the ship. She hasn’t said a single word all sweep about the future lying in wait for her, the time that will come when she’s required to Helm. Since your Ascension, Helmsmen have become a scarce resource, and ships can’t be retrofitted fast enough.

Captain Fuckface’s smile turns into a contemptuous smirk. He actually believes the stupid rumour that AA’s ports are just for show, that he’s going to be the one to prove it.

You lean in over the table and keep your voice down, because you’re not entirely ignorant of political maneuvers and embarrassing a Captain in his own ship is a complication you don’t need. “Don’t do this,” you tell him, lips barely moving. “Drop it before you have a chance to regret it.”

He regards you with a half-lidded, disdainful look that makes you think of what Eridan could have grown up to be, without all of you, and blanch. “Your Empress is a child playing pretend,” he says, finally. “If she, or a mutilated excuse for a troll, or a pissblood with one hand are supposed to intimidate me, I must confess it’s not working.”

“You’ll learn,” Aradia says, her voice as mirthless as his, and stands.

\--

“What the fuck are you going to do?” you hiss at Aradia, your hands shaking as she sits in the Helm. “What do you think this _proves_?”

Aradia braids her hair back and twists it into a knot, exposing the ports that march up the back of her neck, her eyes distant. “I don’t know,” she says, just when you’re about to ask if she’s even listening to you. She looks up at you then, and smiles. “I’m sick of being afraid. I’m sick of pretending this doesn’t exist. I’m sick of ignoring it.”

You rub a hand over your face, because you are too. Sick of reaching for her in the short sleep periods you share, sick of locking up when you bury your hands in a rig and inevitably start cataloguing all of the refinements that have no mark of your hand in their design, sick of waiting for everything to fall apart.

“Plug me in?” she asks, quiet, knowing exactly what she’s asking of you.

The two of you have kicked everyone out of the Helmsblock, including the Helmsman whose shift it should technically be. You take a deep breath, lean over AA’s head, and grab the first connector, losing yourself in the process of hooking someone up to the Helm without thinking too hard about who it is.

_—_

“Ugh,” Aradia says, wriggling against the support column with a lip curled. “Next revision gets to be focussed on comfort, I think.”

You wait with a hand on the switch that will make the connections between Aradia and the ship live. “Ready?” you ask, your mouth dry.

Aradia twists one last time before settling. “Ready.”

Before you can lose your nerve, you throw the switch. After all her organising the column to try to find the right position, Aradia arches hard enough that she nearly throws herself off the Helm completely, before slumping back into the chair.

“No, I’m-” she says, absent, staring unseeing at the ceiling. “It’s just been a long time.”

You sit back against the wall and bury your head in your knees, your arms wrapped over the back of your neck. “So what’s it-?”

“Fuck off,” she snaps, and you look up. “No, not you, I can’t - I keep mixing up text and audio outputs, your Ancestor just told me to do a barrel roll-” She licks her lips. “I- I forgot what this was like.”

“Tell me,” you say to your knees as you resettle your head, not sure what you’re feeling about this and entirely sure you don’t want to know.

Aradia’s silent for a long time. “I always tried to help the ghosts, if I could,” she says, finally. “Dig up trinkets, bury bones, free trapped lusii. I was the only pair of hands they had in the real world.” Her words have a faint rhythm, coming out to the beat of the engines that has become the background noise of your life. “Now, all these people…” She rolls her shoulders, still not looking at anything in this room. “I have a thousand pairs of hands, and I’m still the only one who can hear them asking for help.”

Despite everything, you climb to your feet and step your way carefully over to AA. When you work your fingers into her hair, she smiles into blank space, and her cheeks are wet.

—

The door to the Helmsblock opens without the bloop that usually accompanies the card reader set into it, Captain Fuckface - you’re going to use that name in your official report to Karkat, he needs a laugh - storming through and nearly getting caught by it closing again, because Aradia can be as petty as the rest of you, when she has a mind to. He’s reaching for the switch that will disconnect AA when you bounce him off the opposite wall with a crack of psionic power.

Instead of going for his strife specibus, he just gapes at you, not believing that the uppity one-handed pissblood just dared to fuck with him.

“Does that satisfy your curiosity?” Aradia asks, voice empty. 

“Get us back _on course_!” the Captain snarls at her, picking himself up and giving you a venomous look. “Your flagrant disregard for the orders I sent-”

“We are on course,” she says, life coming back into her with a blink. She wants to be present for this. “After you saw fit to allow me unrestricted access to your system, I spent some time auditing. We would have done this regardless, of course, but this was faster.” She waits until he’s focussing on her and appropriately nervous before continuing. “After forwarding the results to Admiral Vantas, he authorised calling you in for a full review.” There’s nothing but savage satisfaction in her voice when she says, “You’re the stupidest tyrant I’ve met so far, and that’s saying something considering the past sweep.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” the fuckface - since he’s not likely to be a Captain much longer - snaps. 

“Not to the letter of the law,” you say, your mouth twisting into a displeased scowl as you remember the careful layering of shifts to get around the working-hours and compensation regulations Feferi put in place for Helming that you double-checked for Aradia. “But the Empress of the Alternian Empire would like her subjects to aim higher than obeying the _letter_ of the law.” Aradia rolls her eyes at you, because you’ve clearly been spending too much time talking to Terezi if you’re busting out these lines.

“We did warn you,” Aradia says, mild. “The Empress requires the best. You had your chance to measure up.”

—

You get one single blessed week of freedom from this shit-scraping duty after you drag Captain Fuckface in front of Karkat, since nobody expected you back so soon and all the couriers are still occupied with running emergency supplies and finding ships left drifting if they’re not specifically assigned elsewhere. Even better, you get in just at the beginning of night shift, which means you aren’t obligated to do the presenting-yourselves-to-the-Empress song and dance until the end of shift meal. You let Karkat curse at you for twenty minutes about how you should have just vented ol’ Fuckface through an airlock instead of adding to his pile of paperwork, then walk out, find a guest bunk, and collapse into the sopor before anyone can put another job on your plate.

When you wake up, Aradia’s sitting on the rim of the other bunk, in loose clothes and bare feet instead of the Helmsman uniform you’ve reluctantly become used to seeing her in. With talking still beyond you, you pull yourself up until you can rest your chin on the rim of your ‘cupe, watching her and waiting for her to say something.

“I was thinking,” she says, scrunching her toes into the floor. “We could requisition one of the couriers. Get through this faster.”

You blink, slowly, as you consider it. “You’d helm?”

Aradia nods.

You think it through, your brain slowly ticking into gear. “What about after? If you start helming it’s going to be hard to justify stopping.”

“Yeah, but I’d control it,” Aradia says, fidgeting with her feet still. “I’d get to choose. And it’s not like we’re going to be finished with this any time soon. As long as I don’t have a jerk trying to give me orders…” She shrugs. “I’d be okay with it. For us.”

You lever your arm out of the bunk and reach for her until she gives you her hand, then drag her towards the bunk until she gives up and gets in it with you. It’s a tight squeeze, but you’ve never minded tight quarters with AA. “Week of sleep,” you tell her, and she laughs as she nods into your shoulder. “Then we can talk to FF.”

It’s not the future you imagined, but it’s good enough.


End file.
